I've had another flurry of comments and e-mails castigating the recent "negativity" of Amor Mundi. I find myself perplexed and exasperated as I always do when this happens.
I do critical theory. I criticize. What do people honestly expect of me?
Look, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We all know this. What must look like "negativity" from the perspective of such hellbound good intentions may well do the only measure of "positivity" available to us at an historical juncture, causing us to pause in our hellward tumble, causing us to interrogate after our real motives, causing us to question the extent of our knowledge, the soundness of our assumptions, the breadth of our survey of our options.
I like "positive" programmatic proposals as much as the next person and have offered up my share of them here on Amor Mundi, heaven knows, but I also know well the value of criticism and know that criticism is critical (in more ways than one).
I think it has to be mostly pampered and privileged people who would bridle at a confrontation with "negativity" in the world today, such as it. But, quite apart from that, it seems to me that those who would always only relentlessly "accentuate the positive" -- as the old song goes -- risk being forced by that commitment into an uncritical acceptance of the definitive terms of the status quo.
Radical futurists may boggle at the suggestion that they are accommodating rather than overturning convention when they go off on their marvelous arias about digital immortality, utility fog paradises, traversible wormholes, prostheticized superbodies, and so on. But just as ancient orders would legitimate their rule through their presumed connection to some more glorious past, modern orders would legitimate their rule through their presumed connection to some more glorious future our commitment and obedience will award us. Both gestures are ultimately as conservative as can be.
No progress that is more providential than collective in its organizing assumptions is a truly progressive progress: If one's vision of the future is imagined to express as well as to arrive through the machineries of the same corporate-militarist competitiveness and prioritization of parochial profit-taking as animates current incumbent interests, then this vision is retro-futural however many chromed curved surfaces it promises us. If incumbent interests are content to imagine their disproportionate powers intact after the arrival of some radical vision of the future, you can be sure that vision is not so radical as all that. Worse, if such incumbents are among those most eager to invest in and handwave into the airwaves about this vision, it is a safe bet that this vision is positively retro-futural, even if it is swarming with nanobots and ubiquitous computation.
The only way to be sure that one is always positive and never negative is to acquiesce to the terms of the status quo -- in its animating essentials rather than its distracting superficial details -- and acquiesce so absolutely that one neither threatens it nor even looks outside of it for insight, solace, or pleasure.
Now, here's the thing. All of this I have been saying is true enough as far as it goes, but it is also true that the roads to better futures will be no less paved with good intentions than are the roads to hells. Those who would influence the future to democratic and emancipatory ends will surely be the ones who will have inspired the imagination of the next generation -- and inspiration is much more the work of the hopeful than it is the scarred or the scared.
What seems important to me is to grasp that both of these platitudes are powerfully true, and that they are not easily reconciled (indeed, you haven't really grasped the paradox involved until you grasp its abiding difficulty). The too reflexive and too unreflective ascription of "negativity" to criticism seems to me too complacent and too anti-intellectual by far to conduce to the benefit of genuinely progressive ends.
One cannot know whether it will be the critical or the programmatic intervention that will be the more positive one, the one that will enlist the imagination and the work that enables or builds the next bit of road to a better place. What will count as the positive or the negative from the perspective of the better place we might get to will likely differ from what registers as "positive" or "negative" where we stand now.
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20 comments:
Fair enough. It's just psychologically taxing to see negativity all the time, and I've never met a critical theorist before. I agree that from our current perspective, we don't know what in retrospect looks "positive" or "negative". In particular, I think James Fehlinger and Marc Geddes have chips on their shoulders. You seem to be critical from a more academic, intellectual, and agreeable viewpoint.
I come from the perspective that persistent negativity is the game of the outsiders, the angry and rejected. Your negativity is not truly persistent, however, as it often comes bundled with positive prescriptions such as guaranteed minimum income and whatnot.
As someone who works for a gigantic and respected academic institution, I find it interesting that you feel it necessary to stir up negative sentiments towards a much, much smaller and less powerful group. Although I think it's flattering that you feel that transhumanism is growing more powerful and is on a trajectory towards mainstreaming. (Thiel's recent party and the numerous people and media types there certainly did give me that impression.) But I can tell you are quite fussy that we refuse to integrate a politicized agenda into our enthusiasm for ultratechnology, at least in the case of SIAI.
Incidentally, both Lifeboat and CRN, the organization I work for and enthusiastically support respectively, do have implicit political stances (both encourage regulation), though in the words of Eric Klien, "this cause (x-risk prevention) is more important than political divisions".
It's just psychologically taxing to see negativity all the time.
Just as it is always taxing to find one's assumptions interrogated. From inside a discourse, interrogation is very likely to exert its pull on our attention first as an unpleasant nagging negativity. Often this is ultimately a very good thing, but sometimes it happens in ways that are not worth the trouble. It can be hard to know which is which. In such matters I try to keep always in mind James Baldwin's beautiful interpretation of karma: "People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead."
As someone who works for a gigantic and respected academic institution, I find it interesting that you feel it necessary to stir up negative sentiments towards a much, much smaller and less powerful group. Although I think it's flattering that you feel that transhumanism is growing more powerful and is on a trajectory towards mainstreaming.
As I pointed out in a response to Anne a couple of days ago: "There simply aren't enough Singularitarians or Transhumanists in the world to exercise my worried imagination too much, except to the extent that they attract undue money and mediation, to the extent that they symptomize broader discursive tendencies, and especially to the extent that the latter articulates the former. The irrational exuberance of the 1990s digirati stood in a structurally symptomatic rather than logically identical relation to the Extropians, for example. It was as a symptomatic discourse rather than as an effective movement that Extropianism was most worthy of analysis in my view. The Critique of Superlativity (which subsumes Extropian-movement, as it happens) is much the same sort of thing."
I must say it is hard to figure out from this if you think I represent the Man from atop my elite academic perch, or represent the sad angry loser, rejected, marginalized, outside the clubhouse. To be marginalized by the marginal is not necessarily to be more marginal still, you know, but sometimes to be more mainstreamable. That's definitely part of what I'm counting on.
You mention CRN and the Lifeboat Foundation. As you know I am positively disposed toward CRN -- even if occasionally I quibble with this or that -- but the Lifeboat Foundation troubles me very much, almost as much as SIAI does. I guess I could go on another bender of critiques, but the prospect seems a little dispiriting for now. Let's agree to stick pins in each other on that topic at some later date! Best,
Extropianism was not symptomizing of 1990s digerati, although it was correlated with it. It was a movement unto itself, which led to modern-day transhumanism, now being covered as the top story on NewScientist.com, btw.
I don't think you represent either of the caricatures you list. Human beings are not caricatures.
Why are you troubled by the Lifeboat Foundation? It seems you are troubled by anything that takes away from your radical leftist causes. But the right wing political machine takes away much MUCH more than transhumanism ever could. So your return on investment by attacking the right or the center would bear much more fruit than attacking a tiny movement.
BILLIONS of dollars go towards causes besides transhumanism that distract away money from the causes you advocate. Organized transhumanism barely takes in a million a year! Even the broader discussions in society supposedly symptomized by transhumanism aren't even very powerful or relevant. You seem to attack them out of pure personal interest, rather than passion for your cause. If you were passionate for your causes, you would go after the bigger fish!
(Not to say I particular care either way, you can continue criticizing transhumanism all you want, of course, just pointing out it has a piddling ROI compared to other possible critiques.)
Extropianism was not symptomizing of 1990s digerati
Is that a "fact"? I say it was. Do you even know what I mean when I speak of a symptom in a case like this?
It seems you are troubled by anything that takes away from your radical leftist causes.
No shit, Sherlock. (Irony impaired input smiley here.)
BILLIONS of dollars go towards causes besides transhumanism that distract away money from the causes you advocate. Organized transhumanism barely takes in a million a year!
I will quote for a third time: "There simply aren't enough Singularitarians or Transhumanists in the world to exercise my worried imagination too much, except to the extent that they attract undue money and mediation, to the extent that they symptomize broader discursive tendencies, and especially to the extent that the latter articulates the former. The irrational exuberance of the 1990s digirati stood in a structurally symptomatic rather than logically identical relation to the Extropians, for example. It was as a symptomatic discourse rather than as an effective movement that Extropianism was most worthy of analysis in my view. The Critique of Superlativity (which subsumes Extropian-movement, as it happens) is much the same sort of thing." The influence of a discourse doesn't always map onto dollars spent in any obvious way, it seems to me.
Even the broader discussions in society supposedly symptomized by transhumanism aren't even very powerful or relevant.
Obviously, I strongly disagree.
You seem to attack them out of pure personal interest, rather than passion for your cause.
That's what I "seem" to be doing, is it?
If you were passionate for your causes, you would go after the bigger fish!
Thanks for the advice.
Not to say I particular care either way
Oh, palpably not.
Hey may be the kids right Dale - perhaps we should just leave 'Singularitarians' alone now. M.Anissinov has 'taken his licks' after all.
The so-called 'transhumanist community' seems to revolve around the egos of a very few people, so I've got no further interest in it.
I once tried to help the SIAI out but they spat in my face. So no more unsolicited advice or thoughts from me. On any topic. Stick to ya job, stick to ya socially assigned role, keep ya head down and ya mouth shut. That's the ticket. Anything else, it seems, just doesn't pay.
Michael Anissimov wrote:
> I think James Fehlinger and Marc Geddes have chips on their shoulders.
> You seem to be critical from a more academic, intellectual, and agreeable
> viewpoint.
I can't speak for Marc Geddes, and I am not an academic, but I think
I've drawn together a few interesting associations. Of course you're
not going to acknowledge them.
The technical point: AI isn't going to happen the way Eliezer
Yudkowsky, in particular, expects (or claims to expect) it to.
It just simply isn't. His posturing as a "cognitive scientist"
is 30 years out of date.
The first psychological point: The imperviousness of certain folks
in >Hist circles to having things such as the above pointed
out to them, together with their breathtaking (and breathtakingly
silly) claims to "super-genius"-hood, suggest, um, an
Axis II problem. There's corroborating evidence for this,
um, problem.
The second psychological point (no offense to Anne Corwin):
There's rather a lot of literal, linear, narrowly-focused
thinking in >Hist circles, suggesting an Autistic Spectrum
thing going on. OK, so some folks (even Simon Baron-Cohen)
have suggested that maybe this is the "wave of the future"
since so many techies and computer programmers are this
way. And maybe it isn't.
The first socio-political point: The spectacle of cranky,
elitist libertarians claiming that their politics
isn't politics at all, it's simple rationality, gets
up my nose after a while. And there are too
damn many outright Ayn Rand fans floating around (and
their ludicrously naive Randian theories of mind and
"rationality" feed back into point #1 above).
The second socio-political point: The juxtaposition of
cranky, narcissistic leaders and naive, literal-minded,
defensive, and starry-eyed followers is just the formula
for giving birth to a brand-new baby cult. Forget the
"secret handshakes". That's not what it's about.
Have I missed anything?
> Incidentally, both Lifeboat and CRN, the organization I work
> for and enthusiastically support respectively. . .
Oh, then you will no doubt be amused to learn that I was
staggered to see an e-mail in my (work) in-box yesterday
inviting **me** to become a member of the Lifeboat Foundation's
"Scientific Board of Advisors". Signed by Eric Klien.
My first response was to fire off a message to Dale
exclaiming "why the hell do these people think I'm qualified
to be on the Scientific Board of Advisors of a supermarket,
let alone a Foundation?"
I suspect, however, that I somehow got on that particular
mailing list by mistake (or perhaps somebody was having a little
fun), so I'm just going to ignore it. I can't believe you guys
are **that** hard up for advisors. ;->
I gotta agree with jfehlinger,
after enough time hanging around the ultra high-IQ types on the transhumanist lists pushing all manner of bizarre ideas, you just kinda see right through all the bullshit and it all ends up just plain irritating.
I agree that AGI most definitely won't come about in the way the Singularitarians think it will and that the world is still a long long long long long way from true AI.
They ain't got a clue man. Academia ain't got a clue about AI, and Eli and co are probably only *slightly* less clueless.
Indeed, the failure of Eliezer and co to believe my ideas about AI may have set their cause back 30 years at least ;)
--
Forget the Internet gurus, go to the real-world hackers for some real 'Arse Kicking' wisdom. Try reading the essays of this guy:
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
---
OK, if you want wisdom I give you SIAI gurus one last peice of unsolicited advice:
CODE THE FAI IN LISP ;)
http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
"We know that Java must be pretty good, because it is the cool, new programming language. Or is it? If you look at the world of programming languages from a distance, it looks like Java is the latest thing. (From far enough away, all you can see is the large, flashing billboard paid for by Sun.) But if you look at this world up close, you find that there are degrees of coolness. Within the hacker subculture, there is another language called Perl that is considered a lot cooler than Java. Slashdot, for example, is generated by Perl. I don't think you would find those guys using Java Server Pages. But there is another, newer language, called Python, whose users tend to look down on Perl, and more waiting in the wings.
If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp. Python copies even features that many Lisp hackers consider to be mistakes. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958."
You see? You can get more wisdom from a real-world butt-kicking hacker in two paragraphs than you got out of a self-appointed Internet guru like Yudkowsky in 10 years.
Indeed, the failure of Eliezer and co to believe my ideas about AI may have set their cause back 30 years at least ;)
That smiley is carrying rather a lot of weight, I'm afraid. I hope it indicates a healthy disdain of the very idea of gurus altogether rather than an itch for such a position yourself!
Dale,
Your criticisms are far more valuable in my view (given my preferences and best understanding of the world and of moral philosophy). The snarky tone and gratuitous insults don't bother me, but even if they did the free service would more than compensate. While I would not rely on your analysis outside your field (e.g. on economics, ethics, or on object-level arguments about technical feasibility), you raise relevant points about rhetoric and some of the sociological dimensions of your 'Superlative' targets.
Even though I agreed with much of your critique in those domains before first encountering it, this agreement is not going to suddenly convince me that I should be spending my time on fighting for abortion rights in America as opposed to contributing to malaria relief (by donation, fundraising, research, or political action depending on their relative effectiveness and impact on other areas), or on malaria relief as opposed to existential risk, but it sometimes provides useful insights that help to guide my choices in pursuing my charitable goals. Knowing about the flaws of organizations with aims I endorse allows me to decide whether the issues are reparable or whether to try to build structures from scratch.
With respect to Extropianism, you have been somewhat ambiguous on the causality: you say that Extropianism was symptomatic of irrational exuberance, suggesting that the former was caused by the latter without substantial influence in the other direction, but then talk about the potential for a discourse to have influence far out of proportion to dollars spent. So what are the causal relations you are proposing?
Michael,
Since most of the people here are pathologizing you, I wouldn't say it's a breach of etiquette to critique Marc and James for their (reasonably transparent) personal grudges, but they may still bring up useful points: however much you may wish to overcome bias, you have not yet done so, and an opposed advocate can raise issues that you would not otherwise contemplate.
Defending Marc is beyond my ability, but James does raise some specific relevant questions even if you are offended by them and he is eager to offend for personal reasons.
For instance, regarding Lifeboat, James' story is pretty ridiculous, and vast lists of 'advisors' who have essentially no actual involvement with the organization are rather sketchy. Is the accusation below accurate?
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/08/more_futurism.html
"Patri Friedman writes:
Note that the lifeboat foundation is headed by Eric Klein, who has a bad reputation, at least according to Jim Davidson, who I believe:
"The main problem was there was going to be a founding conference at Ceaser's Palace, Eric Klein asked people to donate money, got guys like ?Courtney Smith? to put up fifty-thousand dollar loans to be paid back out of the proceeds from the conference, and he was going to sell tickets to the conference. Well he got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars together and he used it to cover all his stock market speculation losses, his picks all went down and he didn't have stop-loss orders, basically gambling stupidly. You can still go to oceania.org and see his website, but it doesn't represent an active project."
http://www.seastead.org/talk/ff2004/ff2004_talk_notes.html
They asked me if I wanted to be on the scientific advisory board b/c of my work on floating cities and I turned them down for this reason."
If so, it seems that you should be participating in a critique of Lifeboat in order to force Klein to hand over financial authority to someone with a less checkered past.
James,
Surely an effective movement can initially grow out of a nutty one. The WTA and IEET can trace their intellectual ancestry back to Extropianism and Ayn Rand, even though they firmly reject wacky stuff like Objectivism and anarcho-capitalism. Math used to be a cult (Pythagoreans). The Enlightenment grew out of a diversifying ferment of Christian thought, etc, etc.
"Utilitarian" wrote:
> Michael,
>
> Since most of the people here
> are pathologizing you. . .
**Nobody** here, as far as I can tell, is pathologizing
Michael.
He's young, he's idealistic, he's gotten rather uncritically
caught up in a movement he clearly believes is the best
extant chance of "saving the world". His unwillingness
to see the dark side is not a "pathology"; it is, God
help us, a normal state of affairs for the human
animal.
> Surely an effective movement can initially grow out of a nutty one[?]
Now **that** is a very complex and controversial question.
Surely, at any rate, an unchecked nutty movement can cause
untold damage in the short run, before it "mellows" into an
"institution" (not an Institute! ;-> ).
Yes, the vast majority of people somehow seem to live their
lives and do their work "around" all the mishegas.
And also, at least in this country, most people have the
luxury of not having to pay much attention to the
existence of, say, the Scientologists, despite the
cult's wealth and its army of lawyers.
> James. . . is eager to offend for personal reasons.
James simply realizes (as Dale has come to realize)
that pussyfooting gets you nowhere. You have to be at least
willing to offend in order to even be heard.
> . . .(reasonably transparent) personal grudges. . .
I'm pretty much over any **specifically** personal animus I
may have had toward anybody in the >Hist movement. But
the emotional involvement I once had I now regard as an
extremely useful "probe" -- it motivated me (and it takes
a **lot** to motivate me ;-> ) to shake loose information
and find some patterns that I would not otherwise have
discovered.
And as far as the personal element is concerned --
Anne Corwin's tribute to Madeleine L'Engle, quoted below by
Dale, contains the following:
"In Wind, the echthroi are portrayed as the perpetrators of a
phenomenon called "Xing", which is basically the active negation
of someone else's personhood. Humans, other sentient creatures,
and echthroi alike can X others… The echthroi (and the "Xing" concept)
are frightening on that visceral level that anyone who has
ever faced a bully will surely recognize. The negating impulse
inherent in bullying is shown to be the very same brand of evil
that results in people being burned as witches, or deemed
"inconvenient" (e.g., because they stand in the way of someone's
ambition for the throne), or tossed aside as insignificant
or useless due to some perceived imperfection."
Narcissists, as I've come to understand them, are the
consummate "X-ers" (and I don't mean "X-Men" or "Generation X". ;->
I mean they negate, unthinkingly and unfeelingly, everyone
else's personhood.)
That's -- OK, I guess. They simply exist, like rattlesnakes and
black widow spiders exist. But anybody who gets close to one had
better take precautions. And they **cannot** be taken at
face value.
James,
It's possible to have a justified personal grudge. It's possible to want to offend for good reason. It's possible to have an explanation of someone's allocation of effort to a topic without explaining away their arguments. Or not. My point was that either way, there are relevant things being said.
"Utilitarian" wrote:
> Dale,
>
> . . .
>
> With respect to Extropianism, you have been somewhat ambiguous
> on the causality: you say that Extropianism was symptomatic of
> irrational exuberance, suggesting that the former was caused
> by the latter without substantial influence in the other direction,
> but then talk about the potential for a discourse to have
> influence far out of proportion to dollars spent. So what are
> the causal relations you are proposing?
Have you seen this paper: "Californian Ideology" by
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron
http://www.arpnet.it/chaos/barbrook.htm
It's an attempt to elucidate the historical matrix of
Extropianism, among other things. I don't know if I
entirely agree with it (or even understand it!), but it's
amusing.
There's also Paulina Borsook's "Cyberselfish" (which exists
in multiple forms, as various magazine articles as
well as a later book). Here's one:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1996/07/borsook.html
And in fact, Ms. Borsook had a debate with none other
than Max Moore in HotWired magazine (is that an offshoot
of _Wired_? -- ah, yes, it just seems to be the name of
the on-line version) on this subject.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000620015234/hotwired.lycos.com/braintennis/96/33/index0a.html
Michael Anissimov wrote:
> Attack attack attack. It's a whole lot of negativity. Yes, I know I have an
> interest to lament the negativity because I'm the target of it. . .
No, you're not.
> . . .but seriously, > I wouldn't put half this much effort towards maligning
> any group or cause, even Scientology. (Which caused my friend Keith Henson
> to be arrested.)
>
> . . .
>
> It's just psychologically taxing to see negativity all the time. . .
>
> I come from the perspective that persistent negativity is the game of
> the outsiders, the angry and rejected.
Dale wrote:
> I've had another flurry of comments and e-mails castigating the recent
> "negativity" of Amor Mundi. I find myself perplexed and exasperated as
> I always do when this happens.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
who's the most suppressive of us all?
:-/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_Person
-----------------------------------------------------
Suppressive Person, often abbreviated SP, is a term used in Scientology
to describe the "antisocial personalities" who, according to Scientology's
founder L. Ron Hubbard, make up about twenty percent of the human
population—thus about 1.33 billion people. A statement on a Church of
Scientology website describes this group as including notorious historic
figures such as Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan. . .
The term is often applied to those whom the Church of Scientology perceives
as its enemies, i.e. those whose "disastrous" and "suppressive" acts are
said to impede the progress of individual Scientologists or the Scientology movement. . .
According to Hubbard, suppressive persons have a number of distinct characteristics:
1. He or she speaks only in very broad generalities.
2. Such a person deals mainly in bad news, critical or hostile remarks, invalidation,
and general suppression.
3. The antisocial personality alters, to worsen, communication when he or she
relays a message or news. Good news is stopped and only bad news, often embellished,
is passed along.
4. A characteristic, and one of the sad things about an antisocial personality,
is that it does not respond to treatment or reform or psychotherapy.
5. Surrounding such a personality we find cowed or ill associates or friends who,
when not driven actually insane, are yet behaving in a crippled manner in life,
failing, not succeeding.
6. The antisocial personality habitually selects the wrong target.
7. The antisocial personality cannot finish a cycle of action.
8. Many antisocial persons will freely confess to the most alarming crimes when
forced to do so, but will have no faintest sense of responsibility for them.
9. The antisocial personality supports only destructive groups and rages against
and attacks any constructive or betterment group.
10. This type of personality approves only of destructive actions and fights against constructive or helpful actions or activities.
11. Helping others is an activity which drives the antisocial personality nearly
berserk. Activities, however, which destroy in the name of help are closely
supported.
12. The antisocial personality has a bad sense of property and conceives that the
idea that anyone owns anything is a pretense, made up to fool people. Nothing is
ever really owned.
According to Scientology doctrine, individuals who possess a majority of these
twelve anti-social characteristics can be expected to believe it is for their
own self-preservation that they are "keeping others down" or "keeping people
ignorant" and even though they may not exhibit outward signs of insanity, the
results of their actions are nevertheless found to be harmful to those around
them.
-----------------------------------------------------
More from the House of Mirrors:
"L Ron Hubbard had the mind of a six year old boy"
http://www.lermanet.com/cos/lordoftheflies.htm
"The Unperson: Scientologists who cross their religion can
be declared suppressive persons, shunned by peers and
ostracized by family."
By ROBERT FARLEY
_St. Petersburg Times_, June 24, 2006
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/24/Tampabay/The_unperson.shtml
BTW, the link to the "unauthorized biography of
L. Ron Hubbard" mentioned in
http://www.lermanet.com/cos/lordoftheflies.htm
doesn't work, but the book in question is
_Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard_
by Russell Miller, and it's available here:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm
"But
the emotional involvement I once had... it motivated me (and it takes
a **lot** to motivate me ;-> )"
Exactly.
Michael Anissimov wrote:
> I come from the perspective that persistent negativity is the game of
> the outsiders, the angry and rejected.
Some of this is simply temperamental variation, of course.
I replied to an >Hist a few years ago:
> > [M]y oldest [son] has a more pragmatic/optimistic
> > attitude like I do...
>
> Yes, what [William] James called "the cult of healthy-mindedness".
> Most of the >Hists seem to be that way (Enneatype 7,
> I guess). They don't like us sad-sacks raining on
> their parade! ;->
------------------------------------------------------------
In many persons, happiness is congenital and irreclaimable.
"Cosmic emotion" inevitably takes in them the form of enthusiasm
and freedom. I speak not only of those who are animally happy.
I mean those who, when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them,
positively refuse to feel it, as if it were something mean and wrong. . .
It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often
feminine than masculine, and young than old, whose soul is of this
sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds
and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can
think no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being
in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent
burden.
------------------------------------------------------------
-- William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_,
Lectures IV and V
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/WJAMES/ch04_05.html
"Healthy-mindedness" isn't sufficient, alas. It's
too-easily exploitable, for one thing.
It is, I think, salubrious to occasionally re-read the
"fairy-tale" _Animal Farm_ (by George Orwell) from an adult's
somewhat jaded perspective.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/orwell/animal-farm/index.htm
------------------------------------------------
[The great cart-horse,] Boxer with his tremendous muscles always pulled
them through. Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard
worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses
than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to
rest on his mighty shoulders. From morning to night he was pushing and
pulling, always at the spot where the work was hardest. He had made an
arrangement with one of the cockerels to call him in the mornings half
an hour earlier than anyone else, and would put in some volunteer
labour at whatever seemed to be most needed, before the regular day's
work began. His answer to every problem, every setback, was
"I will work harder!"–which he had adopted as his personal motto. . .
Benjamin [the donkey] was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst
tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some
cynical remark -- for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail
to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and
no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If asked
why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Nevertheless, without
openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the two of them usually spent
their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard, grazing
side by side and never speaking. . .
Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed quite unchanged since the Rebellion. He did
his work in the same slow obstinate way as he had done it in Jones's time,
never shirking and never volunteering for extra work either. About the
Rebellion and its results he would express no opinion. When asked whether
he was not happier now that Jones was gone, he would say only
"Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,"
and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer. . .
Late one evening in the summer, a sudden rumour ran round the farm that
something had happened to Boxer. He had gone out alone to drag a load of
stone down to the windmill. And sure enough, the rumour was true. A few
minutes later two pigeons came racing in with the news: "Boxer has fallen!
He is lying on his side and can't get up!" . . .
For the next two days Boxer remained in his stall. The pigs had sent out a
large bottle of pink medicine which they had found in the medicine chest in
the bathroom, and Clover administered it to Boxer twice a day after meals.
In the evenings she lay in his stall and talked to him, while Benjamin kept
the flies off him. Boxer professed not to be sorry for what had happened.
If he made a good recovery, he might expect to live another three years,
and he looked forward to the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner
of the big pasture. It would be the first time that he had had leisure to
study and improve his mind. He intended, he said, to devote the rest of
his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.
However, Benjamin and Clover could only be with Boxer after working hours,
and it was in the middle of the day when the van came to take him away.
The animals were all at work weeding turnips under the supervision of a pig,
when they were astonished to see Benjamin come galloping from the direction
of the farm buildings, braying at the top of his voice. It was the first
time that they had ever seen Benjamin excited -- indeed, it was the first
time that anyone had ever seen him gallop. "Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Come
at once! They're taking Boxer away!" Without waiting for orders from the pig,
the animals broke off work and raced back to the farm buildings. Sure enough,
there in the yard was a large closed van, drawn by two horses, with lettering
on its side and a sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on
the driver's seat. And Boxer's stall was empty.
The animals crowded round the van. "Good-bye, Boxer!" they chorused, "good-bye!"
"Fools! Fools!" shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth
with his small hoofs. "Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side
of that van?"
That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell out
the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly
silence he read:
"'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer
in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that
means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!"
A cry of horror burst from all the animals. At this moment the man on the box
whipped up his horses and the van moved out of the yard at a smart trot.
All the animals followed, crying out at the tops of their voices. Clover
forced her way to the front. The van began to gather speed. Clover tried to
stir her stout limbs to a gallop, and achieved a canter. "Boxer!" she cried.
"Boxer! Boxer! Boxer!" And just at this moment, as though he had heard the
uproar outside, Boxer's face, with the white stripe down his nose, appeared
at the small window at the back of the van.
"Boxer!" cried Clover in a terrible voice. "Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly!
They're taking you to your death!"
All the animals took up the cry of "Get out, Boxer, get out!" But the
van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain
whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his
face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous
drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out.
The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed
the van to matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments
the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the
animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. "Comrades,
comrades!" they shouted. "Don't take your own brother to his death! " But the
stupid brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back
their ears and quickened their pace. Boxer's face did not reappear at the
window. Too late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the
five-barred gate; but in another moment the van was through it and rapidly
disappearing down the road. Boxer was never seen again.
Three days later it was announced that he had died in the hospital at
Willingdon, in spite of receiving every attention a horse could have.
Squealer came to announce the news to the others. He had, he said,
been present during Boxer's last hours.
"It was the most affecting sight I have ever seen!" said Squealer,
lifting his trotter and wiping away a tear. "I was at his bedside at
the very last. And at the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered
in my ear that his sole sorrow was to have passed on before the windmill
was finished. 'Forward, comrades!' he whispered. 'Forward in the name
of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon!
Napoleon is always right.' Those were his very last words, comrades."
Here Squealer's demeanour suddenly changed. He fell silent for a moment,
and his little eyes darted suspicious glances from side to side before
he proceeded.
It had come to his knowledge, he said, that a foolish and wicked rumour
had been circulated at the time of Boxer's removal. Some of the animals
had noticed that the van which took Boxer away was marked "Horse Slaughterer,"
and had actually jumped to the conclusion that Boxer was being sent
to the knacker's. It was almost unbelievable, said Squealer, that any animal
could be so stupid. Surely, he cried indignantly, whisking his tail and
skipping from side to side, surely they knew their beloved Leader,
Comrade Napoleon, better than that? But the explanation was really very
simple. The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had
been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old
name out. That was how the mistake had arisen.
The animals were enormously relieved to hear this. And when Squealer
went on to give further graphic details of Boxer's death-bed, the admirable
care he had received, and the expensive medicines for which Napoleon
had paid without a thought as to the cost, their last doubts disappeared
and the sorrow that they felt for their comrade's death was tempered by
the thought that at least he had died happy.
Napoleon himself appeared at the meeting on the following Sunday morning
and pronounced a short oration in Boxer's honour. It had not been possible,
he said, to bring back their lamented comrade's remains for interment
on the farm, but he had ordered a large wreath to be made from the laurels
in the farmhouse garden and sent down to be placed on Boxer's grave.
And in a few days' time the pigs intended to hold a memorial banquet
in Boxer's honour. Napoleon ended his speech with a reminder of Boxer's
two favourite maxims, "I will work harder" and "Comrade Napoleon is
always right" -- maxims, he said, which every animal would do well to
adopt as his own.
On the day appointed for the banquet, a grocer's van drove up from
Willingdon and delivered a large wooden crate at the farmhouse. That night
there was the sound of uproarious singing, which was followed by what
sounded like a violent quarrel and ended at about eleven o'clock with a
tremendous crash of glass. No one stirred in the farmhouse before noon
on the following day, and the word went round that from somewhere or
other the pigs had acquired the money to buy themselves another case
of whisky.
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gotta agree with you jim,
Yudkowsky, SL4er's and co has (or at least had in the past) a major communication problem. The test I now use to determine whether someone means well or not is the 'feel good' test:
Does the manner in which someone is putting something across make you feel good or bad? If it makes you feel bad, there is something seriously wrong with it, no matter how grand sounding the idea, nor how smart the person claims to be.
And in most cases, these few 'gurus' of SL4 seriously fail the 'feel good' test of communication. They were skilled only in tearing other people down and making other people feel miserable.
---
I of course, am just as guilty, but my past is the past: this was before I realized that the creation of beauty (positive communication) was the meaning of life ;)
jim, it's best not to be too harsh on the Singularitarians, because negativity does backfire: you end up looking worse than they are, which actually plays right into the hands of the cultists.
---
Dale,
I certainly don't want to turn into a cultist myself. But it's important I make sure I have posted my own ideas on AI in a clear and coherent manner in a publically checkable place which won't be suppressed.
The ideas are clearly stated here:
*The creation of beauty is the root of many diverse 'meanings of life' (note I used the plural)
*All the AI problems are likely sub-problems of Ontology - the classification and representaion of knowledge
*Consciousness is the integration of many different ontologies: ie the ability of the mind to translate between different kinds of modelling languages.
*as per the above: it all seems to come back to communication: how to represent, express and translate between differing views. It is precisely *diversity* that makes such a process worth-while - liberal democracy itself is the very social expression of this process - Dale for one is in the right field - he studies Communication (rhetoric is part of communication after all).
*To create AGI you want to create a modelling language of sufficient power to effectively (in real time) express and classify concepts in ANY possible knowledge domain - you want your language to be capable of switching back and forth between any set of ontologies - it's a sort of 'universal communicator' as it were. Once you have expressed enough information in this language to make the language 'self-referential' then BANG - you've nailed it.
*The domain model at the link below displays the skeleton out-line of such a hypothecial modelling language:
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/mcrt-domain-model-eternity
*What are the AI gurus doing programming in C and Java when LISP is 20x more effective?
"So how much shorter are your programs if you write them in Lisp? Most of the numbers I've heard for Lisp versus C, for example, have been around 7-10x. But a recent article about ITA in New Architect magazine said that "one line of Lisp can replace 20 lines of C," and since this article was full of quotes from ITA's president, I assume they got this number from ITA. If so then we can put some faith in it; ITA's software includes a lot of C and C++ as well as Lisp, so they are speaking from experience."
Ref: http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
---
That's basically all I have to say about AI - which as Dale corectly pointed out - is off-topic - but none the less - the ideas are out there for consideration.
---
Lets help we can all meet all in happier times, when the AI can effectively 'translate' between the differing and currently incompatible modes of communication of all the diverse bloggers and messageboarders on the net ;)
And who knows, it is just barely possible that the gurus are right after all and the hypothetical modelling language I talked about above can be written in only 200 lines of LISP code.
The master has spoken :)
(just kidding)
Marc Geddes wrote:
> To create AGI you want to create a modelling language of sufficient
> power to effectively (in real time) express and classify concepts in
> ANY possible knowledge domain. . .
As you point out, this level of discussion of AI is off-topic
for this blog, so I'm going to make one comment and leave it alone.
Your comments imply a metaphor of mind essentially no different
from that espoused by SIAI and associates. Again, see, e.g.,
Lakoff's _Philosophy in the Flesh_ or Gerald Edelman's
_Bright Air, Brilliant Fire_. If this metaphor is useful
for creating artificial intelligence (and it almost certainly
isn't, after half a century of trying, but hey, hope springs
eternal as they say), then it's a mere technical detail
what computer language to program the "modelling language"
in -- C, LISP, or Cobol, for that matter. That wonderful
magician "functionalism" allows you to create an API, or
a "virtual machine", on top of the ugliest, most unwieldy
lower-level language, and seal it off as a "black box"
so nobody has to worry about its inelegancies anymore.
Similarly, if the nuts and bolts of "intelligence", as they
actually exist in biological bodies and nervous systems,
are **simulable** by means of a digital computer, then
it's a mere technical detail what computer language that
simulation code is written in -- C, Lisp, or Cobol,
or assembly language for that matter. The folks who
are "building" the brain will still think in terms of
neurons, neuronal groups, cortical columns, or what have
you, and the simulation code itself will be chunked up
into sealed black boxes the details of which can be forgotten
once they work well enough to be used.
> That's basically all I have to say about AI. . .
Me too, at least at this level of discussion.
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